“The problem of the recommendations is a little stickier,” he sighed. “If you go to one of those schools, you’ll have to change the records there after you’re admitted. That means you’ll probably need someone from your high school to affirm that you are both people. There’s a risk in that. It increases the number of people who know you under both names.”
“I know,” Emily conceded. “I don’t see any way around that. But once I’m living elsewhere, the high school won’t have any record of where I’ve gone. And I can destroy whatever they have in their files about Emily Kane once I’m enrolled someplace. A search for her would come up empty.” Michael thought about this for a moment.
“There is another option,” he began. “The service academies don’t base admissions decisions on recommendations from teachers. They rely on congressional recommendations.”
Emily mulled this suggestion over. It could resolve the difficulty about the letters, as well as allow her to change over the records at her school sooner, insulate herself from her dangerous identity more completely. And she had to admit the discipline of the service academies appealed to her, even if it entailed some narrowing of academic possibilities.
“But won’t the congressman who recommends me want some documentation of who I am?” she asked.
“Yes, but as it happens, I have an acquaintance on the House Armed Services Committee. I’m sure I can persuade him to recommend you.”
Emily thought about this for a long moment. The offer was distinctly enticing, but it would link her with Michael’s influence inextricably. Even if the congressman could keep the secret, there would be others in his office who might reveal the connection, even if only inadvertently. No, she thought, Michiko Tenno was only completely safe if she had no connection to Michael or anyone else associated with him.
“Michael, I’m going to need your help in a thousand ways, I know,” Emily said, still a little uncomfortable using his first name. “But I think I’m going to have to solve this problem on my own. It’s not just about a name. I have to decide who I’m going to be”
“I see your point, Emily,” he replied. “Here’s one thing you can do, right now to shore up Michiko’s history. When you fly home you’ll have a stopover in Tokyo, and then fly home through Hawaii. You should clear customs as Michiko, not Emily.”
Over the next few days, Michael watched Yuki and Emily together. He wondered how Yuki could have been so near Emily for all those years without revealing anything. It must have torn her apart. He supposed the pain she felt then must have been roughly the reciprocal of the joy that was written across her face now.
Andie noticed it too. She had known Yuki since they first came to Virginia, when Emily was just a toddler. She had always seemed reserved and enigmatic to her. Now her heart was an open book. Andie was even more moved by the changes in Emily’s demeanor. The new clothes revealed how pretty she is. But now she saw just how tender this girl could be as well. She marveled at the way Emily could be so resolute yet so sympathetic, so open to her mother. She was an impossible combination of grit and grace. She was beautiful.
When Andie took her back to the airport a couple of days later, she handed her a new thumb drive and some new travel documents Michael had sent along. She sat with her in the airport cafe for a few minutes before her flight.
“I hope you don’t mind about the clothes,” Emily ventured half-apologetically. Andie smiled.
“How could I,” she teased. “You look so great in them. I wish I looked that good.” Emily blushed. Andie wiped away a little tear from her left eye.
“Well I’m glad you feel that way. Your clothes really helped me find my way when I needed to. I hope that makes sense.”
“It does, don’t worry. I think I know what you mean.”
“Well, I’m grateful.”
Andie looked at her face and was struck by how simple and open she was. She looked in those deep black eyes and saw a perfectly innocent soul. She had always thought of Emily as a tough, resourceful kid. Now she saw her as a mature young woman with the heart of a small child. As they got up to go to the gate, Andie put her arms around her and held her tight, like she was her own daughter. She whispered in her ear.
“We are all very proud of you, sweetheart. Let us help you if you ever need us.”
Emily smiled and nodded. Then she turned and walked to her gate. Andie watched her make her way through the terminal, smiled wistfully and headed back to the villa.
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Chapter 17: Kyoto
Emily landed at Kansai Airport, built on an artificial island in Osaka Bay, one of the most expensive public works projects in human history. The trick had been to keep the island from sinking into the silt of the bay under the weight of the terminal structures and the runways. It was a monument to civic resolve, or perhaps it was just stubbornness. Emily passed through border control as Michiko Tenno, native, citizen of Japan. She had spoken Japanese from childhood. Yuki had made a point of it, speaking to her in her native tongue whenever possible. Her vocabulary was limited, but her feel for the character of the language was practically that of a native speaker. She felt at home in it. A semester’s study in high school showed her how the grammatical presentation of a language cold and unhelpful. She already knew more from her mother than this class could teach her. It felt especially good to speak her mother’s tongue now.
Michael had arranged for her to have a layover here for a few days. She would fly out of Narita airport in Tokyo and on to Honolulu, finally from there to the mainland. Each leg of her journey was booked independently of the others. It was a long trip, but Michael wanted her to have an opportunity to size up her situation along the way, not leave a trail directly back to her home. Perhaps he also wanted her to have a chance to spend some time in one of her homelands.
Whatever Michael intended, Emily took a train to Kyoto and checked into a little ryokan near the Yoshida shrine on the west end of the city. There was something wonderfully familiar in the feel of the city to her. Maybe it was just seeing herself surrounded by crowds of people with long, straight black hair, people who looked like her. She loved the sound of their voices, the smell of their food, the bustle of their busy lives. She could walk around the city in almost perfect invisibility, except for the fact of how tall she was. She was not absurdly tall, but she was still a good five or six inches taller than most of the women she saw. She also walked differently, with a calm self-assurance that was noteworthy. There was nothing deferential in her manner. She strode through the streets of Kyoto for the next couple of days like a tomboy, the gait so familiar to her friends in Virginia.
She visited the important shrines and temples, the Shogun’s castle, played the tourist for a while. The university also captured some of her attention. Perhaps she was looking for a clue to her own future in the young people bustling about the campus. They weren’t really all that different from the students she had watched at the university in Charlottesville. They carried books in backpacks, walked to and fro with friends, listened to music, idled in the plazas, walked along the avenues. The campus of Kyoto University was not as pastoral as the one in Charlottesville. There were more tall buildings, fewer trees and lawns. It felt more industrial. Learning here seemed to be a product, there a leisure activity.
Emily eventually attracted a little more attention than she wanted. As she sat in one of the campus cafés, she noticed a couple of girls arguing with two young men who looked to be a bit older than they were. One of the girls noticed Emily sitting alone and pulled the other girl over to her table. She asked very politely if they could join her, and then promptly sat down without waiting for a response. After a quizzical glance, Emily asked if there was a problem. Before they could answer, the older boys came over and yelled at the second girl that she should come away with them immediately. She shuddered and buried her face in her hands. Emily could see she was frightened. The first girl yelled at them to leave, and stood up in their faces. They pushed her d
own rudely. As the girl fell backwards, Emily stepped out of her chair and propped her up.
She glared at the men, staring directly into their faces. They were unused to such a direct challenge, and perhaps they found her glower a little unnerving, not to mention the fact that she was as tall as they were. “Can I help you,” she asked, in perfectly polite Japanese.
“You’re not wanted here,” the larger one spat back at her as he turned toward the crying girl. He reached as if to grab her arm, but Emily quickly inserted herself between them.
“You’re the one not welcome,” she hissed at him. As she said this, she grabbed his hand, twisted it back and pushed him to the floor. Everything in the room seemed to stop for a brief moment. It felt to Emily as if every eye was turned her way. In fact, almost no one was paying any attention.
The young man on the floor writhed in agony from the insult he felt he had just received. He sprang up and surged toward her, uncertain as to whether he could actually strike her in public. Emily appeared unmoved, which only infuriated him further. He reached for her, as if he meant to grab her arm and shake her. His friend moved to seize the girl at the same time. Emily spun the first man into his friend and sent them both sprawling. She stood over them and growled “Stay down, unless you want to risk even greater humiliation.” Now people in the room began to take notice.
The two men looked up into her eyes and thought better of it. They weren’t exactly afraid of her. But they had no confidence they would be able to save face in this sort of confrontation. They slowly edged away from her looming figure, picked themselves up and tried to walk away with some dignity. Just as they left the room, the first man hurled a curse over his shoulder at Emily. She shrugged her shoulders and turned back to the girls.
They were dumbstruck. It obviously had never occurred to them that they could stand up to men in such a way. Still, they had been drawn to seek shelter at Emily’s table. On some level they must have sensed something reassuring there. They looked at Emily with a mixture of amazement and horror in their eyes. She had protected them, but at what cost?
“What did they want,” Emily asked. The girls just looked at her, speechless.
“Why do you tolerate such behavior?” Again, they were silent. They understood her perfectly. They seemed to have no idea how to respond.
Emily could see this inquiry was going nowhere. She bent over until she was level with their faces, looked them in the eyes and said, “You are on your own now. Stand up for yourselves.” She smiled at them and walked away.
She took a train to Tokyo the next day. The ride passed through the lake district near Kosai. Her mother’s family came from that area, she knew, though it was likely she had no living relatives there anymore. The thought occurred to her to get off and catch a later train. But in the end she decided to stay in her seat and content herself with watching the scenery pass by through the window.
Her mind returned to the scene at the university. She found it hard to believe those girls could allow themselves to be treated in such a way. How could they act as though they were helpless, at the mercy of a bully? Why did no one else object? It was incomprehensible. Even more puzzling to her was how isolated they seemed from their own inner strength. They could resist, if they would only choose to do so. But somehow, they had completely lost sight of that dimension of their own personalities. They had made themselves into victims, waiting for the next bully to take them up on their offer. They seemed doomed to spend their lives in a cringing existence, hiding from their boyfriends, later their husbands. Certainly such behavior was not particularly Japanese. Her own mother would never tolerate such treatment, nor would she ever allow Emily to do so. It made her angry just to think about it, and frustrated to realize there was nothing she could do to help those girls in any lasting way.
She spent the night in a hotel in Tokyo, and boarded a plane for Honolulu out of Narita airport the next day. It was a long, uneventful flight. She slept most of the way. In Honolulu, she entered the country as an American citizen of Japanese descent. The border security agent asked a couple of perfunctory questions. She grunted a couple of bland replies and passed on through. Almost no notice was taken of her first official act as Michiko Tenno. She found the experience not a little bewildering. It was, after all, exactly how she wanted to live, as an ordinary citizen, the sort of person government agencies take no special notice of. But as the pieces of her identity fell into place around her, she couldn’t help feeling almost numb. As she walked away, she slapped her face lightly and snapped into an alert mode. She needed the rest of her stay to be as uneventful as her entry had been.
She made a quite circuitous journey through the terminal, on the lookout for any suspicious looking people who might have an unhealthy interest in her. She saw none. Eventually, she brought her luggage to a ticket counter on the upper level of the terminal and checked it through to Los Angeles, except for a small overnight bag. Her flight departed the next evening, giving her a bit more than a day to spend in Honolulu. She took a room in a motel near Kapiolani State Park, and found a seafood stand around the corner where she had lunch. Later she rented a scooter to explore the area around Diamond Head. Her parents had come to Oahu when she was just an infant, though they probably lived further around the point, up towards the Marine base at Kaneohe Bay. The scenery was spectacular, but it didn’t seem especially familiar. It wasn’t home. That was in Virginia, for better or worse.
She spent the next morning wandering around the capital city. It was a melting pot of American, Asian and Polynesian cultures. Here she could blend right in, among the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Koreans and the Japanese. They were all Americans, like her. They shared her manners, her culture, even her gait. No one could imagine that she looked out of place. And yet, she felt someone was watching her. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, couldn’t quite see who it was. But she felt it. The problem with blending in was the danger could blend in too.
Emily made her way back to the airport, looking over her shoulder the whole way. She could not detect a tail, but thought the airport security might make it easier to spot one. After she passed through the checkpoint, she went to a nearby restaurant and took a seat where she could watch whoever came through after her. She ordered a bagel and cream cheese and a glass of orange juice. She saw nothing suspicious. After about twenty minutes, she walked to the gate and boarded her flight a little later. Several hours later, she arrived in Los Angeles. Her instincts seem to have been correct. If there were any Chinese operatives in Honolulu, they hadn’t tracked her onto the plane. She left Los Angeles without any further incident, and flew on to Charlottesville, arriving that evening.
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Chapter 18: Back Home at Last
Emily’s flight landed at Charlottesville-Albemarle airport late, around 11:00. The last leg had been on a regional carrier flying a small jet. The weather was a little choppy, so the little plane bounced around quite a bit. It felt a little like riding a roller coaster. A few passengers got sick, and the flight crew was kept busy tending to them. Emily peered out her window and wondered at the amount of light visible even at night. The country looked like a Christmas tree. She could make out a jagged dark gash to the south that must have stretched for miles, like a chasm amidst all the lights around it. She guessed that it must be the forests around her home. It was one of those perspective paradoxes. Seen from above, the dark mountains looked like a deep hole in the bright valleys. There was something reassuring about that thought: a dark haven from all the lights. She felt safest when she was in the woods, and exposed when she went into the towns. Was she living in a hole? A buried life?
She made her way to the baggage claim, and while she waited for her luggage she was reminded of those two girls at the university in Kyoto. They thought of themselves as helpless, and that became their reality. It was as if someone was hiring victims, and they couldn’t help but apply for the job. The one girl had tried to stand up to those guys, but cru
mpled at the first sign of aggression. The other one merely cried the whole time. Were these just the lives they had ended up with by chance, or were they an expression of who they really were? Were they merely living out some eternal human type?
It was difficult for Emily not to draw the obvious comparison to her own situation. She was living in hiding as she tried to find a way to craft an identity she could use to live out in the open. Was it really only temporary, or was she just finding another hole to hide in? She saw her luggage tumble off the conveyor belt on to the carousel and slowly circle towards her. She grabbed the biggest piece and hoisted it up. Damn, it was heavy. She noticed the name tag hanging from the handle, but couldn’t remember if she had written her information in it. Out of curiosity she lifted the flap and noticed the curious double characters, kanji over English letters. That certainly caught her attention. She had definitely not written that. And then it struck her like a thunderbolt. It was her mother’s handwriting. She had written her daughter’s name: Michiko Tenno!
Emily took it as a sign, a message from her mother about who she should be. She scrambled to get the rest of her luggage. This was the name her mother and father had wanted for her. They had devised it on their own, without any input from Michael or any other outside source. This is who they wanted her to be. She sat on the pile of her luggage and pondered how she was going to get home. The last shuttle left in fifteen minutes. It would drop her in Goshen, where she could get a taxi to Warm Springs. But she really didn’t want to haul the luggage all the way to the other end of the arrivals terminal to get to the shuttle stop. Just then she saw some familiar faces. Wayne was walking towards her, bellowing her name, with Danny and Billy trailing behind him.
Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) Page 16